Monday again. When I arrived in school I saw that Carsten was ill. I immediately volunteered to be his substitute for the 9th and 7th grade. That was no problem. The 9th graders had to find texts for their exams and write something about it. Some of them went looking for a text, others were writing. One girl asked my help. She already had 2 texts but one of them was a bit too difficult for her, so together we found a new suitable text for her.
At ten o’clock, I had a lesson in the 5th grade. They were really enthusiastic about me teaching them again. We started with a text from their textbook called Grace Darling. It’s a text, actually a legend, about a ship wreck. The pupils read it out loud, also because this is the way they work here. It doesn’t matter if you make mistakes, you have to try. The teacher corrects if they make mistakes. Afterwards we looked at the vocabulary. I said the English words and they said the Danish word. This was quite funny. Then I told them we were going to do 2 things. They were divided into 4 groups. Every group got a paper and they had to write their own story. The paper was divided into 3. First they had to think of a hero, then about the place and last but not least about a plot. I explained everything that was on the paper. Then I told them that I was going to take one pupil outside and tell her a sentence. She had to pass the sentence on to someone else and so on. [The sentence: Yellow butter, purple jelly, red jam, black bread, spread it thick, say it quick.] It was a bit chaotic and I couldn’t check how the sentence sounded now because the lesson was over.
After my lesson in the 5th grade I had to hurry to be on time for my lesson in the 8th grade. I didn’t have to teach them myself because they had to do a reading comprehension. Jørgen challenged me to take the test myself. It was quite funny because the test was actually quite tricky. I made a few mistakes although I don’t think you can really call them mistakes. You had to find the right headline for a short piece of text. Jørgen thought that I had a few mistakes but I think it’s just the way you interprets the text. J
Well, in the afternoon I had a lesson in the 7th grade. Carsten was ill but t I had to teach this lesson anyway so I didn’t mind. We went on with the USA. I wrote 5 categories on the smart board: presidents/buildings/celebrities/sport/films. The pupils had to come up with 5 things for each item. When that was finished I told them they had to choose one 1 and try to speak about it as long as possible. There was one catch, when one item was chosen; no one could choose it again. Carsten gave me this idea and I thought they would be very eager to do this and to have an item that they know. But they didn’t. They didn’t really want to speak but I told them they had to do it now or tomorrow. We also made an extra category: food because this was a bit easier. At the end of the lesson everyone had talkedJ. I asked them if there was anything they wanted to learn about America, because then they could tell me know and I could try to fix that. They told me they wanted to learn about New York, buildings, people, culture, food and cars.
So their wish was my command.
On Tuesday, Carsten was still ill and they had chosen a substitute. I told Lasse that I had to teach that lesson anyway so I could easily substitute. When I came into the class, the pupils were a bit surprised about the fact that I was there and no the other teacher.
We started off with a listening comprehension. The pupils had a small map and they had to act like they were on a tour boat. I read a text and they had to follow the route I told them and complete the activity. They had some small pictures of the special things they passed and they had to say what it was. They didn’t look very enthusiastic but I thought it was just because it was the first hour of the day. (They had the first 2 hours off.)
Then I had a worksheet about buildings. I made small boxes with some information in it. It was written in the I-person so that it looked if the building was speaking. They also had boxes with the names of the buildings/statues/… and then they also had the pictures. They had to match the 3 things together. In the meanwhile, outside was a music class but the pupils were playing music in the hallway which made a lot of noise. The pupils did what I asked but again without the enthusiasm. After we corrected the exercise I showed them a website. It was the website of post crossing. There you can make an account and then you receive an address of someone in the world who’s also a member. The meaning was that you write postcards to each other.
I had printed out some postcards and I told them they had to write a postcard. They could choose to write a postcard to a good friend or to me or to someone else. On the other side, they had to draw something or they could print something out and paste it on the paper. I thought this was a nice activity because it was a free activity. But at the end, one or two postcards were flying through the class and so on. They didn’t really care about it. After that lesson I was so mad. I put a lot of effort to make fun activities and to make boring things interesting but apparently they just don’t care. I started doubting if I was the problem. Did I do something wrong? I was quite down and I thought that I wanted to make one last effort for that class.
In the afternoon I had the 5th graders again and that’s no problem.
I asked the 2 pupils if they could still remember the sentence. They could but it was not completely correct. Only the girl who was the first one to pass the sentence through could remember. This way I could explain them what a legend was. Then every group had to read the story they had written. Some were really funny! J
I also told them a legend about my region in Belgium, the legend of “het alvermannetje”. They liked it a lot and they were listening with a lot of attention.
Then I told them that we saw a family yesterday in the text of Grace Darling. I asked who the family members were and they still remembered. I gave them a worksheet with a family tree on. Only one name was filled in. They had to fill in the rest by reading a very short text. They liked this a lot. Then they had a small vocabulary exercise. They had the English words and they had to translate it into Danish.
It was also the end of the lesson when they finished their exercise. I told them that I had some homework for them for Friday. They were like: Nooo. I laughed and said: well if you do your homework, I’ll do mine as well. I told them to bring a picture or more than one of their own family. If they did, I would also bring some pictures of my family. When I said this, they were really enthusiastic. Some of them even came to me on my way out to ask if it was okay if it was on USB or if it was a picture with their parents and so on. J
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